Robbing Peter to pay Paul

Babies are expensive. I really can't even fathom yet what having a baby will cost, but this realization that we need someone to be with the baby all the time is very sobering. We have been well aware of the fact all along, but now we're trying to adjust our budget, and it became very real: We are going to take a drastic cut in my income, or else we will have to pay for full-time child care, which would mean a drastic expense.

I am strongly, strongly, strongly opposed to full-time daycare for countless reasons. The biggest reason is probably that it would just make me unhappy. I love children, and for some reason I have a feeling I'll especially love my own child, and I'll be damned if I'm going to sit in a grey cubicle for 8 hours a day and commute for 1 to 1 1/2 hours a day and let someone else play with my baby, especially when I'd have to pay them pretty much what I earn in take-home pay. Other reasons include that my degree is in child development and child care. And I personally think I'm extremely highly qualified to care for a child. It would be like a mechanic paying someone else to fix his car. It just doesn't make sense. My least favorite reason, because I know it's unpopular, is that I just hate daycare and I think it sucks for kids. Now, I'm not saying that I think no one should use it and you suck if you do use it. For a lot of families, it's a great option. Some parents aren't really into being parents, and that's okay. Not everyone can get excited about making snakes out of play-doh or tolerate 24-hour programming of Barney and the Wiggles. And I understand there are social benefits of a group care setting, especially in pre-school years. But for babies, I stand my ground: daycare sucks.

And I think I have a right to say so because I worked in one when I graduated college. As hard as they tried, they couldn't break me. I refused to succumb to the overwhelming morale of parents-are-the-screwups-who-derail-our-good-training. See, in a daycare, there are 4 infants per 1 adult. That's the law. (I mean, that's the maximum allowed by law, and the bare minimum allowed by management who steals from parents and pays underqualified transient workers minimum wage.) If a woman gave birth to 4 children, no one would ever, ever, EVER suggest that she should stay home and try to feed and care for all 4 of them until they were quite old, perhaps 9 months or a year old. But we don't bat an eye at allowing our 6-week old infants be in the care of a worker who is solely responsible for 3 other infants at the same time. I don't get it. But it's worse than this. Not only do they set the underqualified workers up for failure, but these underqualified workers develop patterns of care to deal with the fact that no one could possibly meet the needs of 4 infants simultaneously. Specifically, they don't pick up the babies. They can't. If you pick a baby up, it expects to be held. Well, no shit, Sherlock. Babies are supposed to want to be held. It's instinctual. And parents do weird things like hold their babies while they feed them, and rock them to sleep, and pick them up when they cry, which spoils the babies and ruins them for the daycare workers. They can't be expected to hold 4 babies while they eat, or rock 4 babies to sleep simultaneously, so they just don't do it. And this works, more or less. The proof is in the pudding. Most daycare babies sit on the floor, or sit strapped into a bouncy seat, and drink from a bottle that's been propped up for them, and make little fuss when you plop it in a crib. Sure, it's hard for them the first couple of weeks, and they cry a lot, but they soon learn that crying is pointless and no one's going to pick them up, and they get used to it.

To me, this is the saddest thing I've ever heard. Okay, maybe not the saddest, but it's right up there. I mean, it goes so strongly against every belief of child-rearing that is popular today, but very educated and wealthy people just ignore the facts and delude themselves into thinking that their baby's needs are met in daycare.

Okay, this is going totally off the subject. This post is about being out of money, and it sucking. It is not about daycare sucking. But to my little baby, if you ever read this, I want you to know that I won't let that happen to you. I may use daycare for short days a couple of times a week if Daddy and I get desperate for care and I still need my paycheck, but I won't leave you there to suffer. I will always be there to meet your needs, and I won't let anyone break your spirit and teach you that resistance is futile.

Back to money: it sucks to not have a lot of it. But I know that no matter how much you have, when you have a baby, it doesn't feel like enough. And I don't even really think we have anything to worry about. I know we'll be fine. But we have been getting along wonderfully with our budget since we got married, and now all of a sudden, we are going to take what looks to be a 20-25% cut in income. That's huge!! I'm not sure where we'll find 20-25% of costs to cut, but we can do it. But the garage door can't be fixed. The electrical system in our house can't be fixed. The windows can't be fixed. The roof over the side porch can't be fixed. We can't get a dishwasher. We can't get new speakers. We can't get new bedroom furniture, and we can't get a new car. The car thing is worrisome. I hope our little Cavalier can hold us and a baby for trips across the state, and I know we can make it work. Plenty of people go further with less. But the Cavalier is getting up there in age. A 5-year old car isn't old, but a 5-year old Cavalier is geriatric. But Mike takes such good care of that car, and I know it will take good care of us.

I hope.